h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi All

How many of you have upgraded?

I have and things are noticeably quicker for me.

The only problem I have had was with screensavers - none of the downloaded ones worked. I use the BOINC screensaver (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) most of the time and thought that was it for a while as the latest stable release did not install a screensaver. Went to BOINC forums and found the latest Beta release and all is now fixed.

So far...

t.

I plan to upgrade (I like the idea of 64-bit and proper multi-threading) but I have to wait for some to crack it first. Oh, I will pay for it, it's just that I'm running a Hackintosh, so the official upgrade will kill it.

Hi Peet

I'll speak to my brother who also runs a Hackintosh and see what he has to say!

t.

I've upgraded too, and it is definitely faster in many ways. The interface changes, though there are very few of them, are all good.

There are beta versions of growl and flip4mac too that are worth grabbing, if you use those. Flip4Mac didn't work with Quicktime 10 until I installed the beta.

Did you not install the optional QT 7 from the disk?

I have had some problems (now easily resolved) with HP printer drivers, ColorSync (sic) profiles and scanning. Image Capture is part of the solution to the scanning issue as HP Scan Pro is not supported (oddly M$ Word will import from the scanner with Scan Pro - go figure?(as they say)).

Overall I am pleased with the upgrade though

t.

I had quicktime pro, so it was installed automatically. But why use it, when you have the shiny new Quicktime 10? I like 10 better than 7 as a basic movie viewer.

My scanner is so old it never had the proper drivers for OS X, and though I've tried in the past I have never been able to get it to show in Image Capture, so no change for me there. The canon software seems to be working fine though, and if not there's always VueScan.

I had no issues with HP printer drivers, I tried 3 different HP printers at work.

What ColourSync (sic ) issues did you have? I found that most of my images already had profiles so the change in gamma had no observable impact. A few now look like they do under Windows - I haven't tried adding a profile to correct them yet.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3712

I hate the American spelling of colour!

I installed QT7 because I had Pro and I thought I would loose that extra functionality. Apparently not. It's not a big deal space wise so... The only other thing not yet tested is Flip4Mac. We shall see.

VueScan is good. I have used it before for an old Epson Stylus Scan 2000 multifuntion device when I upgraded from OS 9 to OS 10.1. I had to get hacked printer drivers from Google Groups (my Hacker brother found them - the print engine was an Epson 740 and they put that into a unit with a scanner with two lines of code changed!).

The HP print drivers for my HP Photosmart 2575 worked fine (just no scanning) but when I checked Apple Software Update there was a driver update which I installed. It all went pear shaped from that point. There were some specific HP ColoSync profiles before which I lost. These were useful to improve photo printing from iPhoto. I got them back by copying them over from the other iMac in the house that was not yet updated. The profiles lived in /Library/Printers/HP/AIO.

Everything is fine now though.

t.

Well, I've just placed the order for my copy. Now all I need do is wait for someone to crack it...

No reply from my bro yet. He's just been to Blarney in Ireland and is probably Guinness-soaked and in no fit state to read an email.

t.

LifeHacker have just published an article on how to install it from scratch; with a bit of luck I'll be able to figure out how to "tweak" that for upgrading...

http://lifehacker.com/5351485/how-to-build-a-hackintosh-with-snow-leopard-start-to-finish

They've disabled Appletalk which is creating me lots of problems in trying to get around it so that my printer (Apple Laserwriter 8500) will talk via wifi. I posted here - in the wrong place. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F95446?thread=6936759&post=85936615#p85936615 gj x

I've got no experience there, but I can see that you're going about it in probably the most frustrating way possible. I suggest starting over with a completely different methodology.

First, here's the manual for you printer:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/0340210ALW8500UG.pdf

Notice that there are sections for setting it up under Windows, and a section for setting it up under "UNIX Workstations".
If you want to try the Windows method, it should be fairly easy provided you can still get the printer setup software for Windows. Use VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ and borrow any old copy of windows that you can from one of your friends that probably has numerous old installation disks sitting around in the basement or garage. This will be a whole lot easier than sheepshaver and mac ROMS etc.

~but~

If you are using an ethernet router or hub that can do "BOOTP" network assignments, use that. You'll use your router's configuration software or internal web page to assign the printer an address.

~and~

Mac OS X *is* a "UNIX Workstation" so those "PING" directions (starting on page 89) may work without any problem. You'll use the "Terminal" application that you find in your Utilities folder, in your Applications folder. But you'll need some translation if you're not familiar with unix administration:

Step 2: As long as you're using an "admin" account on Mac OS X, you're good. You'll use the "sudo" command to give you "root" access. When it asks you for a password, just use your regular Mac password.
Step 3: in terminal, type "cd /etc" then type "sudo cp hosts hosts.backup" (this makes a backup copy of your hosts file, in case something goes wrong). then type "sudo nano hosts". That will put you in the "nano" text editor, which is pretty easy to use. You press control-x to save and exit (the black letters at the bottoms are your "menus" of commands that you can use, the "^" means hold down the control key when typing that letter. It's a good idea to practice using nano first, I'll put that in my next message).
Step 4: type "sudo" in front of the "arp" command (i.e., "sudo arp ..."). This is actually the step that I'm not sure about , arp might not do anything in Mac OS X since Apple configures their network settings very differently. If it doesn't work, there's probably an easy alternative but I would need to research what it is.

If something goes wrong: messing with your /etc/hosts file *could* result in losing internet access (so print this all out before you try ). If you need to go back, in terminal type "cd /etc" followed by "sudo cp hosts.backup hosts" which will copy the backup file you made back to where it was originally.

Now about practicing with nano, which I highly recommend you do before trying to mess with your /etc/hosts file.

Open terminal. This time do *not* ever type "sudo" - when practicing you just want to be your regular self, not the "root" user. You can damage things when typing "sudo", so never type it unless you absolutely *must*.

type "cd Desktop" (this puts you on your Desktop, so any files you create will be visible there, and you can just double-click them to see the results of what you do in nano).

type "nano test.txt" and type anything you want. Then exit and save. You should see the file on your desktop, double-click it to open it and make sure that it worked OK.

oh one more thing! "BOOTP" can also show up as "DHCP" (a newer type of BOOTP which is often, but not always, backwards compatible) or "Static IP Mappings" or some such. Poke around. In "Airport Admin" it shows up as "DHCP Reservations"